| I disagree, this is pretty different from depression-is-just-sadness. The article is not shortcutting to a non-solution, it's pointing out that there can be overlooked root causes beyond the symptom, and this can be a very valuable thing to point out to people, leading to actionable solutions to their problem. I was diagnosed depressed for many years, and it turned out I simply had the expected affect given I was not socializing enough, exercising enough, or sleeping well enough given an undiagnosed case of sleep apnea and a bit of a spiral from obsessing about trying to stay employed despite that affect. Talking myself in circles, messing around with serotonin, none of this got me anywhere because it wasn't solving the actual problems. I didn't need any of that, I needed a machine that pushes air into my face at night and another one that pulls a belt below my feet in the morning, but the professionals I visited failed to prescribe these. People have no basis of comparison when it comes to their direct subjective experience with long-lived habits so someone who exercises regularly can say "if I couch-potato too hard, I'll start to feel gross", but someone who doesn't can't as easily observe "I feel gross all the time because I never exercise enough". Likewise with hygiene, regular social exposure, sleeping properly, eating properly. It's important to think of mood as a complex function with many inputs and a good amount of feedback and delay. Certainly it can be the case that depression is its own root cause, and one should not reject talk therapy or prescriptions to help with it, but I definitely recommend people search for something they may have overlooked. Maybe there are good psychiatrists and therapists which will find these kinds of things, but I haven't met any. Patients should be aware they need to consider them. |
What sort of therapy is that?